Orange cuts dealer commission

Orange cut the commission it pays business dealers on its big talk plans last month with the understanding that it is making moves for a similar revenue share model adopted by O2 in October.

Commission on deals to business customers with less than 10 handsets and 1,500 minutes were cut by around £100 to £600. Some are hopeful they will receive new information that will give them some of the lost income if the customers they generate stay with the network and stay on high tariffs.

But larger business dealers said they could lose thousands of pounds in large deals. The largest minute bundles were halved, while upgrades and add-on handset commission remained the same.

Orange said the changes were part of a regular review of how Orange pays its dealers and that the drop in up-front commission was not a move to revenue share.

An Orange spokeswoman said: ‘We are still finalising if, when and how the revenue share model will roll out.

‘The commission is still paid up-front; we have just re-balanced how much commission we pay. Even with this change, we still pay b2b dealers more than the industry average, which we believe makes our commission for SMEs the strongest in the industry.’